The present invention relates to a commodity storage apparatus suitable for a vending machine which permits to drop forwardly, for example, predetermined packaged commodities for carrying out or delivery of the packaged commodities.
A conventional commodity storage apparatus is shown in Japanese Patent Publication (Unexamined) No. 9-106,476. The conventional commodity storage apparatus comprises an apparatus frame, a plurality of shelves arranged in a vertical direction to space with each other and fixed to the apparatus frame, and a plurality of delivery mechanisms placed at forward ends of the shelves, respectively. Each shelf has a forwardly slant portion and houses commodities therein. Responsive to a vending signal known in the art, each delivery mechanisms makes each of the commodities be slid down forwardly one by one from each shelf. The commodities are supplied from a front face of the commodity storage apparatus to the shelves, respectively.
In the conventional commodity storage apparatus described above, there is a serious problem that the commodities must be inserted through a relatively narrow and small space of the shelves, resulting in deficiency in workability of supplement of commodities. This is because the shelves are fixed to the apparatus frame.
An attempt was made to provide shelves, each of which can be drawn along a forward inclination so that supplement of commodities can be conducted readily. In the attempt, however, there is another problem that when each shelf is drawn forwardly toward a working personnel, a weight or load of each shelf is partly added to the working personnel to thereby provide some defects on the workability of commodity supplement. This is because each shelf has the inclined portion which inclines forwardly.